A delicate task recently fell to the head gardener at Alcázar royal palace in the southern Spanish city of Seville: he had to choose the oranges for the Queen’s marmalade.
“They were harvested over there in the Poets’ Garden and the Marqués de la Vega Inclán Garden,” Manuel Hurtado, a senior official from the palace who gave The Times a tour, said. “Those trees bear the most and best oranges.”
Once the oranges destined for the Buckingham Palace breakfast table had been picked, wrapped in tissue paper and packed in a case, they were handed to the honorary consul in Seville for dispatch to the embassy in Madrid and then London.
“It is a century-old tradition that we revived this year for the first time